Assignment 5: Book Covers
For this assignment I chose the book cover brief, I really enjoyed the other book cover tasks and thought it would be a lot of fun to create more. Penguin Books has asked me to design a new house style for a collection of books on design for children and young people. They are starting with three titles; colour, photography and typography. The designs have to be recognised as a series and also be appreciated for their own individual merit.
The first thing I did was decide on the style I was going to create the book covers, on one of the other units I created a photo montage, my tutor really liked this style and I thought that It would be a good place to start with my book covers. I also wanted another theme that flowed throughout the covers. I had the idea of using decades and their defining characteristics regarding the theme of the covers. I chooses the 60s, 70s and 80s. This wasn't going to be all the cover was to include but rather just a background theme that helps connect the covers further.
60s was going to be colour as I knew straight away the pyschedelic 60s would make such a cool visual representation of the decade, therefore portraying colour in a unique way.
70s was type as I really like the packaging and vernacular typography of the decade, I also thought the colour scheme would make for a interesting cover.
80s then had to be photography, there is a lot of iconic photos from the 80s and I could delve into a more vintage theme for the cover.
There was a huge focus on different medians with this cover, I used pastels and marker to create illustrations following the psychedelic 60s theme. I did some research for the decade to get some ideas on what to include in my cover. From what I found the crazier the better, there was an artist that gave me so much inspiration his name was Keiichi Tanaami. He produces work with a very psychedelic feel and also inside a collage theme as well.
The biggest theme for the cover was how colour effects the brain and how you can manipulate the colour to change its physiological meaning, for example white represents peace and associating it with a gun then creates an oxymoron and shows the power colour has over the brain. It shows the clear contrast between what the colour should represent and what its connected with. Seeing white alongside a gun that is associated with violence and death is a paradox. It challenges the idea that white means peace, but why does white mean peace? Its something humans have affiliated it with and with this cover I wanted to highlight that.
After I did my initial research I set out to make a background for my book cover, I wanted to be as crazy and as psychedelic as possible. I wanted to further experiment with different medians so I used pastel as Ive really been enjoying getting to grips with them and this gave me extra practice to help master blending and the pigments.
This was a photo I took whilst in Brighton I really liked this fountain and thought that It fitted perfectly with my colour book cover. I adjusted the colours of the fountain to fit closer with the cover using the saturation tool and curves. I then cut out the fish from the fountain and placed it on the cover. I also really liked the aesthetic of vintage illustrations and thought the fit into the theme.
These are a few of the Keiichi Tanaami illustrations from which I got some inspiration.
From the above two images you can get a real sense of what his work is all about, its vibrant, fun and pushes boundaries. I did recreate some of the elements inside these pieces of artwork for my own cover such as the fish and colour explosion.
This was the next cover I created on Typography. My theme for this one was typography around the world and then with an over arching 70s theme. I looked at a lot of 70s packaging and movie logos as well as posters and war propaganda as the 70s was when the Vietnam and cold war was in full swing. I wanted to include a lot of typography from other countries such as Russia and China. For this book cover I created a couple of illustrations, I really loved the quote from Andy Warhol, I thought it fit great with the cover and after the first cover I unintentionally created another reoccurring elements for my covers, this time it was having a quote inside the cover. I wanted to experiment with different fonts for the quote.
I then took the sketch into photoshop and coloured them. I tried to find several different fonts for the quote and the one I liked the best was the more 70s style font. I was inspired heavily by this. It was something I found when researching 70s themed typography.
The next thing I did was find a colour combination for the text, I used a website called Adobe Colour. The website allows you to find colours that work perfectly together and would mean that I wasn't picking random colours that would look odd together.
This was the final cover, it was on Photography. This was the one I had the most impact on, I'm really into photography at the moment and this meant that I had a lot of photos I wanted to include on the cover. I didn't really have a big theme for this one like the other two covers however I included a large amount of photography techniques and really highlight some of the elements that goes into and used to go into producing a photo. Furthermore I wanted to include different types of photographs I sourced some of the following images, sports photography, portraits, architectural and war photography. I then used some of photos to put together a couple of Polaroids.
I used some of the photos I took to make negatives, the following photos are what I took myself and hand picked for this cover.
These are the final back covers and spines, I wanted to keep them relatively simple as the covers are very intense the back cover doesn't have to be as crazy as the cover itself but as long as it has some elements to keep consistency.
A is for: For this task I wanted to create a textbook that wasn't as conventional like brief suggest. I wanted to design the book in a format that wasn't as common. Firstly I chose to do it in landscape which is not conventional for textbooks. I wanted the textbooks to be based on areas of typography in everyday life and teach the student a bit about typography that they might not know or be interested in. This could further attract the student into that area of typography.
I wanted each page to be quite unique so I created the title of each page to follow the theme. To create another layer of consistency I added a yellow overlay to each image it also tied in with my cover.
Final Conclusion: This was a really fun assignment to complete and I enjoyed creating collage style covers as its a technique that really inspires me. It also meant that I could tie in some other medians such as my pastel drawings and my own photography.
The first thing I did was decide on the style I was going to create the book covers, on one of the other units I created a photo montage, my tutor really liked this style and I thought that It would be a good place to start with my book covers. I also wanted another theme that flowed throughout the covers. I had the idea of using decades and their defining characteristics regarding the theme of the covers. I chooses the 60s, 70s and 80s. This wasn't going to be all the cover was to include but rather just a background theme that helps connect the covers further.
60s was going to be colour as I knew straight away the pyschedelic 60s would make such a cool visual representation of the decade, therefore portraying colour in a unique way.
70s was type as I really like the packaging and vernacular typography of the decade, I also thought the colour scheme would make for a interesting cover.
80s then had to be photography, there is a lot of iconic photos from the 80s and I could delve into a more vintage theme for the cover.
There was a huge focus on different medians with this cover, I used pastels and marker to create illustrations following the psychedelic 60s theme. I did some research for the decade to get some ideas on what to include in my cover. From what I found the crazier the better, there was an artist that gave me so much inspiration his name was Keiichi Tanaami. He produces work with a very psychedelic feel and also inside a collage theme as well.
The biggest theme for the cover was how colour effects the brain and how you can manipulate the colour to change its physiological meaning, for example white represents peace and associating it with a gun then creates an oxymoron and shows the power colour has over the brain. It shows the clear contrast between what the colour should represent and what its connected with. Seeing white alongside a gun that is associated with violence and death is a paradox. It challenges the idea that white means peace, but why does white mean peace? Its something humans have affiliated it with and with this cover I wanted to highlight that.
After I did my initial research I set out to make a background for my book cover, I wanted to be as crazy and as psychedelic as possible. I wanted to further experiment with different medians so I used pastel as Ive really been enjoying getting to grips with them and this gave me extra practice to help master blending and the pigments.
Here was my final version of the cover, the pastels I used didn't have multiple shades so I put a bottom layer of colour on and then used hairspray to set it, this then allowed me to go over it again layer to get a deeper colour and to cover up a lot of the paper that could be seen through the pastel. My inspiration behind it was just to be as crazy as possible but also to use colours that I could could then link to colour psychology.
What I then went and did was create my illustrations for the cover, I did copy a few of the illustrations used by Keiichi Tanaami however I then went and changed some of them for example the woman's face I added the earring and changed the eyes a little bit. The illustrations where completely random and what would be experienced after a psychedelic hallucination which was massive in the 60s, this was another link to the brain.
This was a photo I took whilst in Brighton I really liked this fountain and thought that It fitted perfectly with my colour book cover. I adjusted the colours of the fountain to fit closer with the cover using the saturation tool and curves. I then cut out the fish from the fountain and placed it on the cover. I also really liked the aesthetic of vintage illustrations and thought the fit into the theme.
These are a few of the Keiichi Tanaami illustrations from which I got some inspiration.
This was the next cover I created on Typography. My theme for this one was typography around the world and then with an over arching 70s theme. I looked at a lot of 70s packaging and movie logos as well as posters and war propaganda as the 70s was when the Vietnam and cold war was in full swing. I wanted to include a lot of typography from other countries such as Russia and China. For this book cover I created a couple of illustrations, I really loved the quote from Andy Warhol, I thought it fit great with the cover and after the first cover I unintentionally created another reoccurring elements for my covers, this time it was having a quote inside the cover. I wanted to experiment with different fonts for the quote.
I then took the sketch into photoshop and coloured them. I tried to find several different fonts for the quote and the one I liked the best was the more 70s style font. I was inspired heavily by this. It was something I found when researching 70s themed typography.
The next thing I did was find a colour combination for the text, I used a website called Adobe Colour. The website allows you to find colours that work perfectly together and would mean that I wasn't picking random colours that would look odd together.
This was the final cover, it was on Photography. This was the one I had the most impact on, I'm really into photography at the moment and this meant that I had a lot of photos I wanted to include on the cover. I didn't really have a big theme for this one like the other two covers however I included a large amount of photography techniques and really highlight some of the elements that goes into and used to go into producing a photo. Furthermore I wanted to include different types of photographs I sourced some of the following images, sports photography, portraits, architectural and war photography. I then used some of photos to put together a couple of Polaroids.
I used some of the photos I took to make negatives, the following photos are what I took myself and hand picked for this cover.
I did edit these photos with light room so that they fit into the vintage 80s theme. I also included a selection of black and white photos as well as that's another technique used in photography. It also fits into 80s as the vast majority of photos taken in the 80s were in black and white.
Final Mock ups:
These are the final back covers and spines, I wanted to keep them relatively simple as the covers are very intense the back cover doesn't have to be as crazy as the cover itself but as long as it has some elements to keep consistency.
A is for: For this task I wanted to create a textbook that wasn't as conventional like brief suggest. I wanted to design the book in a format that wasn't as common. Firstly I chose to do it in landscape which is not conventional for textbooks. I wanted the textbooks to be based on areas of typography in everyday life and teach the student a bit about typography that they might not know or be interested in. This could further attract the student into that area of typography.
I wanted each page to be quite unique so I created the title of each page to follow the theme. To create another layer of consistency I added a yellow overlay to each image it also tied in with my cover.
Final Conclusion: This was a really fun assignment to complete and I enjoyed creating collage style covers as its a technique that really inspires me. It also meant that I could tie in some other medians such as my pastel drawings and my own photography.
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